A UN human rights envoy has compared Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories to elements of apartheid. The UN’s Special Rapporteur, John Dugard, describes the regime as being designed to dominate and systematically oppress the occupied population.

Mr Dugard is a South African professor of international law assigned to monitor Israeli human rights abuses.
He has extensively studied apartheid in South Africa and has compared it to what he saw under Israeli rule.

Special rapporteurs are independent experts appointed by the UN secretary general to present reports on human rights to the organisation.

Their findings do not represent UN policy.

In a new report, Mr Dugard says: “Israel’s laws and practices certainly resemble aspects of apartheid”.
He points to what he describes as “unashamed discrimination” against Palestinians in favour of Israeli settlers.
“It is difficult to resist the conclusion that many of Israel’s laws and practices violate the 1966 Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination,” says the report.

“House demolitions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are carried out in a manner that discriminates against Palestinians.
“Throughout the West Bank, and particularly in Hebron, settlers are given preferential treatment over Palestinians in terms of movement (major roads are reserved exclusively for settlers), building rights and army protection and laws governing family re-unification”.

A United Nations anti-racism hearing later this week could add more fuel to the debate over a hotly contested Israeli construction project that has sparked anger throughout the Muslim world. Israel’s government has also been asked to explain if it discriminates between Jewish citizens and what it calls its “Arab sector” in how it provides housing, education, public services, land rights and legal protection against acts of violence, according to a list of issues released by the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

The panel of 18 independent experts overseeing compliance with the United Nations’ 38-year-old anti-racism treaty has submitted questions in writing on Israel’s policy for preserving holy sites and asked the government to explain why it only grants special protection for places considered sacred by Jews.

“To date, approximately 120 places have been declared as holy sites, all of which are Jewish,” the committee said in its list of questions, written before the recent furor over a construction project in Jerusalem that some Muslims have charged could damage Islam’s holy places.

Israel – whose quadrennial review was postponed in August because of the Lebanon war – is to appear before the panel on Thursday and Friday to answer the questions, which include whether it “has set forth regulations in relation to holy sites of both the Jewish and non-Jewish population.”

Growing complaints about Israel-bashing, plus Jews being increasingly compared to Nazis during political rallies, has spurred the Anti-Defamation League to hold its first-ever conference on how people can protect themselves against anti-Semitism — from the liberal left.

Anti-Semitism is increasingly seen and heard at liberal events, organizers say, including at anti-war rallies, at labor meetings and even on college campuses. It’s making participation uncomfortable for Jews, who have historically been Democrats.

“We heard from so many people who feel ostracized and alone and don’t really know what to do with this problem,” said Jonathan Bernstein, director of the ADL regional office in San Francisco. People shouldn’t “have to pick between being Jewish and whatever worthwhile cause.”

Sunday’s conference in San Francisco focuses on the problem and teaches coping strategies. The event, which is expected to sell out, will offer talks ranging from “Emphasizing What’s Right in Israel” to “On the Spot Responses to Hurtful Language.”

However, while hateful speech is odious, some critics say groups like ADL are muffling debate by branding almost all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic.

“It’s like saying anyone who attacks U.S. foreign policy is un-American,” said Saul Kanowitz, an activist with ANSWER, which organizes anti-war rallies. ANSWER stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.

Jerusalem – When Knesset member Esterina Tartman opened her mouth on Israel Radio last week to attack the Labor Party for naming Israel’s first-ever Muslim Arab Cabinet minister, she did more than just rattle Ehud Olmert’s shaky coalition. She opened up a raging national debate on the taboo topic of where Zionism ends and racism begins.

“What [Labor leader] Amir Peretz did this morning is to swing an enormous ax at the tree called Zionism,” said Tartman, a member of the right-wing Yisrael Beitenu party, referring to Peretz’s January 11 designation of Labor lawmaker Ghaleb Majadleh as minister of science, sports and culture. “We need to drive out and destroy this evil from our environs…. The State of Israel is a Jewish state that is supposed to be ruled by Jewish values, with a Jewish regime and Jewish sovereignty.”

Tartman’s comments sparked outrage across the political spectrum from politicians and commentators who called her views racist and compared them to the outlawed doctrines of the late Meir Kahane. “The Zionism of Herzl, Jabotinsky and Begin always advocated the integration of Arabs who are loyal to the state in all of its institutions,” said Knesset member Michael Eitan of the opposition Likud party. Eitan demanded a formal Knesset debate on Tartman’s “racist comments.” “No believer in equality and democracy can accept them being on the agenda,” Eitan said.

A Haifa University survey investigating Arabs and Jews’ views on one another reveals disturbing results.

The poll showed that 75 percent of Jewish students believe that Arabs are uneducated people, are uncivilized and are unclean. On the other hand 25 percent of the Arab youth believe that Jews are the uneducated ones, while 57 percent of the Arab’s believe Jews are unclean. Over a third of the Jewish students taking part in the survey confirmed that they are afraid of Arabs. The poll was conducted by Dr. Haggai Kupermintz, Dr. Yigal Rosen and Harbi Hasaisi of Haifa University’s Center for Research on Peace Education.The data was presented at a bi-lingual conference held in Haifa. The study, titled “Perception of ‘the Other’ amongst Jewish and Arab Youth in Israel” included 1,600 students studying in 22 high schools around the country.

The Knesset Education, Culture, and Sports Committee on Tuesday called on Defense Minister Amir Peretz to overturn the sweeping policy of denying Palestinian students entry to study at Israeli universities.

“The impression we received from today’s debate is that instead of examining the relevance of each request, since the start of the year it has become worse, even in comparison to the permits issued at the height of the intifada,” said the panel chairman, MK Michael Melchior (Labor-Meimad).

“We are not dismissing security considerations, but the sweeping policy goes against the basic right to learn and needs to be changed so that each [individual] request is examined,” said the former deputy education minister.

It emerged during the panel’s debate that despite repeated declarations by the Education Ministry, the sweeping ban affects students who had already started courses at Israeli institutions and as a result they cannot complete their studies.

A Defense Ministry representative, Major Liron Alush, told the panel that it had already been decided to permit students who have started courses to enter Israel in order to complete their studies. There are 13 to 14 Palestinian students who fell into this category, she said.

Others present at the debate disputed Alush’s claim, arguing that the ban did in fact apply to students who had already begun their courses.

The debate came in the wake of a petition to the High Court of Justice by Gisha (Access), an association that advocates freedom of movement in the territories.

The petition was submitted on the behalf of Sawsan Salameh, who received an excellence scholarship to attend Hebrew University’s doctoral program but could not attend due to the ban.

Salameh lives in the West Bank, and there is no doctoral program available to her within the Palestinian Authority.

During a speech delivered in the Western Iranian province of Javanroud, Ahmadinejad said: ” The Islamic Republic of Iran is now a nuclear power, thanks to the hard work of the Iranian people and authorities.”

The announcement of Iran as a “nuclear power” is bound to significantly escalate tensions between the West and Iran, and marks a dramatic stage in the Islamic Republic’s nuclear campaign.

In recent days, the US military has begun to build up forces around the Gulf, in what is being seen as as a warning to Iran.Ahmadinejad was also reported to have announced that “Iranian young scientists reached the zenith of science and technology and gained access to the nuclear fuel cycle without the help of big powers.”

In a German television station interview broadcast Monday, Olmert listed Israel among the world’s nuclear powers. This seems to violate the long-standing policy of the country to not officially acknowledge that it has atomic weapons.

When asked by the interviewer about Iran’s calls for the destruction of Israel, Olmert said that Israel has never threatened to annihilate anyone.

“Iran openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map,” Olmert said. “Can you say that this is the same level, when you are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?”

Israel, which has stuck to a policy of ambiguity on nuclear weapons for decades, refusing to confirm or deny whether it has them, yet, foreign experts say has the sixth-largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

The news breaks days after incoming Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in testimony to a Senate committee, identified Israel as a nuclear power.

During an appearance on C-SPAN’s Book TV to promote his new book about Israel, former President Jimmy Carter was bashed by a call-in viewer as a “racist, bigot, and anti-Semite.”

“Aurora” from Illinois thanked Carter for “making” her a Republican, due to his “incompetence in handling the Iranians” and by “cozying up with every dictator, thug, Islamic terrorist there is.”

“But more importantly, I find it to be vile because of your blackest heart, because you’re an anti-Semite,” the caller continued. “And let me explain why I think you’re a bigot and a racist and an anti-Semite…”

Aside from the “namecalling,” the C-SPAN host said that these are the “strong questions coming from people,” who have heard Carter talk about his controversial book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.

Amir Gissin runs what he calls “Israel’s Explanation Department.” Which is why it is surprising to hear him admit that many Israelis think “the whole problem is that we don’t explain ourselves correctly.” Last week, as al-Jazeera launched an Arab view of the world into English-speaking homes worldwide, Gissin was a man under pressure.

At the David Bar Ilan conference on the media and the Middle East, he faced an audience of Israelis who were unhappy about the way the propaganda battle with Hezbollah was fought and lost during the war in Lebanon. They wanted to know how it could be done better next time, because most people in Israel seem to think there will be a next time with Hezbollah soon.

Gissin said the words of his English-speaking spokespeople could not compete with the power of the pictures of civilians killed in the Israeli attack on Lebanese towns like Qana. And the Israeli parliament will not spend the money on an Israeli counterpart to al-Jazeera.

But Gissin was not downhearted. He declared there to be a “war on the Web,” in which Israel had a new weapon, a piece of computer software called the “Internet megaphone.”

“During the war we had the opportunity to do some very nice things with the megaphone community,” he said at the conference.

Among them, he claimed, was a role in getting an admission from Reuters that a photograph of damage to Beirut by a Lebanese photographer had been doctored to increase the amount of smoke in the picture. This was first spotted by American blogger Charles Johnson, who has won an award for “promoting Israel and Zionism.”

POWER

To check out the power of the megaphone, I logged onto a Web site called Give Israel Your United Support (GIYUS) on the afternoon of Nov. 15. More than 25,000 registered users of the site have downloaded the megaphone software, which enables them to receive alerts asking them to get active online.

Sahar Shefa, the owner and founder of the Aroma coffee chain in Tel Aviv, who stirred a public row after cursing a Colmobil employee, Mali Shalev, apologized to Shalev Thursday and agreed to pay her NIS 100,000 (roughly USD 23,000). Last week, the court found Shefa guilty of slander. The compensation agreement is pending the court’s authorization. Shalev took Shefa to court after he verbally assaulted her during a business visit to her place of work. Shalev visited the offices of

Colmobil, Mercedes’ importer in Israel, and was asked to wait for a while until the company’s employees return from a conference they were attending.

When Shalev arrived at the place, Shefa shouted at her: “You see my skin color? I’m white and you’re black, I will screw you, this white guy is going to teach you a lesson, you are a black stain. You are a black and inferior woman. You are an idiot. You’re nothing and I make 800 dollars a minute.”

Susan Nathan, author of “The Other Side: My Journey across the Arab/Jewish Divide,” argued that Israeli Arabs suffer from a culture of systematic discrimination and called for change in the talk “One Woman’s Attempt to Challenge Segregation and Racism” held last night.

A British-born Jew, Nathan moved to Israel to escape the discrimination she experienced in Britain. Her parents were refuges from World War II, and Nathan was raised as a minority, being the only Jew in her entire school of 400 students.

“Growing up, I always felt I was living on the outside of society,” Nathan said. “It was as if the shadow of the Holocaust was constantly hanging over my family.”

Nathan said she even experienced anti-Semitism first hand.

“When I was 16, I passed complex exams to attend a prestigious public university in Britain, only to be told that though my scores were satisfactory, I could not be admitted to attend the university because the Jewish quota had already been met,” she said.

Israel had always been ingrained within her mind as a land of safety to which she could escape in case things in Europe ever took a turn for the worse.

Once she moved to Israel, Nathan found that her new country also suffered from discrimination. However, this time, Jews, rather than being discriminated against, were the ones discriminating. she said. The Arabs of Israel suffered from severe segregation comparable to the plight during South Africa’s apartheid, she argued.

JERUSALEM (AP) – Hundreds of Israelis of Ethiopian descent clashed with police and briefly blocked a main road leading into Jerusalem on Monday in a protest of the Health Ministry’s wholesale discarding of donated Ethiopian blood.

Police said four officers were hurt.

Last week, Israel’s Channel 2 TV reported that the ministry had revived its practice of throwing out the Ethiopian-Israelis’ blood for fear it would be contaminated with disease. A similar disclosure a decade ago sparked protests and widespread outrage in a community that has long complained of racial discrimination.

“We are healthy people, like everyone else,” said 24-year-old Galit Maarat, who travelled to the demonstration from the southern city of Ashkelon, some 70 kilometres away. “It’s unjust, a terrible affront.”

Takelu Yayech, 25, who also travelled from Ashkelon, said demonstrators formed a human chain and sat down in the road at the entrance to Jerusalem to protest what she called racist policies.

ISRAEL –A week into his new position, and Minister of Strategic Threats Avigdor Lieberman has drawn disapproval from the prime minister Sunday for his comments that Israel should follow the example set by Syria and divide Jews and Arabs.

“The source of the conflict here is not territory, it is not occupation, it is not settlers. It is a clash between two people and two religions.

Burning Issues #9: The Lieberman factorAnywhere in the world where there are two peoples and two religions, whether it’s the former Yugoslavia or the Caucasus region in Russia or in Northern Ireland, there is conflict,” Lieberman told the British newspaper the Sunday Telegraph. “What we have seen in Cyprus is that since they have that model, there is no terror. There is security. There is no peace but there is security.”Cyprus has been divided into Greek and Turkish sections since 1974. Repeated attempts by the United Nations to reunify the Mediterranean island have failed.

“Lieberman’s opinions do not reflect mine. That’s not the government’s position and Avigdor [Lieberman] knows that. I am in favor of Arab citizens having equal rights and I never hid that. So long as I am prime minister this will be the policy of the State of Israel,” Olmert said.

Sawsan Salameh, a Palestinian from the West Bank, was thrilled to get a full scholarship from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to begin a doctorate in theoretical chemistry.

But a recent move by the Israeli Army to ban new Palestinian students from Israeli universities for security reasons is keeping her from studying at the campus, just two miles from her home.

“The first time I applied for a permit I was rejected,” said Ms. Salameh, 29, a Muslim wearing a firmly fastened head scarf and a black denim skirt that skimmed the floor. “I was shocked, because I thought there must be some kind of mistake, so I kept trying. I kept hoping.”

Her situation is familiar to many Palestinians whose freedom of movement has been limited in recent years because of the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Ms. Salameh said that after she appealed six times to the Israeli government agency that handles Palestinian affairs, she decided to turn to the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, Gisha, an Israeli group that is an advocate for Palestinian rights, submitted a petition on her behalf to the court, calling the ban illegal.

“Gisha calls upon Israel not to prevent Palestinian students from studying just because they are Palestinian,” said the group’s director, Sari Bashi. “No one should be denied access to education based on his or her national identity.”

Ms Shomrat said it would be open to prosecution in some European countries.

Dagbladet’s editor said the caricature was “within the bounds of freedom of expression,” according to Norway’s NRK state broadcaster.

Ms Shomrat made the official complaint to the Norwegian Press Trade Committee following the publication of the cartoon on 10 July.

In an interview with the BBC’s Europe Today, she said however that her protest could not be compared to the outcry in the Muslim world over the publication in a Danish newspaper of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

Lars Helle, Dagbladet’s acting editor-in-chief, said the newspaper was taking the complaint seriously.

A Scottish actor who worked on Braveheart once told a director friend of mine what it was like working with Mel Gibson. “He’s off his head,” alleged the actor. “We’d all be standing there in kilts and with blue woad painted on our faces, ready to do a shot, when suddenly Mel would announce to the Alcoholics Anonymous members among us – a healthy number – that we had to have a meeting. So there we would be, behind the catering van with painted faces, reading from the Big Book and sharing our experience. You know, ‘My name’s Mel and I’m an alcoholic,’ then we’d all go back to the set and get stuck into the English.”

Recovering alcoholics like to say that they’re sober one day at a time, and it can’t be easy knowing that you’re always just one drink away from your former self. Gibson went spectacularly off the rails last Friday and reportedly did what many alcoholics do – he allegedly drove his car at nearly 90mph, drank from a bottle of tequila, got stopped and arrested, and verbally abused the officers in charge. As situations go, it wasn’t very striking, except that the drunk was a Hollywood star. It certainly wasn’t unusual that the arrested person issued a stream of abuse at the police, racist, misogynist or otherwise. All police will tell you this is standard. Gibson reportedly said: “F—ing Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.”

Silly man – pathetic, even. There isn’t an ounce of reason in what Gibson said, but then, who could expect there to be? Well, the entire Western world, apparently, which imagines that what a drunk Catholic actor says in the extremity of his cups might represent a threat to civilisation.

Do some people think that Israeli blood is more valuable than Lebanese blood? In this clip George Galloway challenges Sky News about this and other bias that seem to be in some of the reporting about the middle east at this time.

In approving an effective ban on marriages between Israelis and Palestinians this week, Israel’s Supreme Court has shut tighter the gates of the Jewish fortress the state of Israel is rapidly becoming. The judges’ decision, in the words of the country’s normally restrained Haaretz daily, was “shameful”.

By a wafer-thin majority, the highest court in the land ruled that an amendment passed in 2003 to the Nationality Law barring Palestinians from living with an Israeli spouse inside Israel — what in legal parlance is termed “family unification” — did not violate rights enshrined in the country’s Basic Laws.

Jewish shops across Rome were vandalized and defaced with swastikas in an apparent neo-fascist attack linked to fighting in the Middle East, officials said Wednesday.

Owners of about 20 shops in the center and outskirts of the Italian capital reached their workplace Tuesday morning to find door locks filled with glue, shutters nailed closed and swastikas defacing nearby walls, said Riccardo Pacifici, a spokesman for Rome’s Jewish Community.

Although not all the shops targeted were owned by Jews, the raid was apparently conducted in reaction to hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas, Pacifici said.

Flyers signed by a group calling itself Armed Revolutionary Fascists were left at the shops denouncing “the Zionist economy” and including pro-Hezbollah slogans, Pacifici said.